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Brain connections could be shaping religious beliefs

Washington, Jan. 28 ANI | 1 year ago

Researchers have found that causal, directional connections between these brain networks can be linked to differences in religious thought.

Dimitrios Kapogiannis and team from the National Institute on Aging (National Institutes of Health, Baltimore, MD) and Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, IL, analyzed data collected from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies to evaluate the flow of brain activity when religious and non-religious individuals discussed their religious beliefs.

The authors determined causal pathways linking brain networks related to "supernatural agents," fear regulation, imagery, and affect, all of which may be involved in cognitive processing of religious beliefs.

Dr. Kapogiannis said that when the brain contemplates a religious belief, it is activating three distinct networks that are trying to answer three distinct questions: 1) is there a supernatural agent involved (such as God) and, if so, what are his or her intentions; 2) is the supernatural agent to be feared; and 3) how does this belief relate to prior life experiences and to doctrines?

Study co-author Jordan Grafman, Director, Brain Injury Research and Chief, Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, said that their study demonstrates that important brain networks devoted to various kinds of reasoning about others, emotional processing, knowledge representation, and memory are called into action when thinking about religious beliefs.

He said that the use of these basic networks for religious practice indicates how basic networks evolved to mediate much more complex beliefs like those contained in religious practice.